Made-in-Vietnam medicine use on the rise

Hanoi (VNA) - The
use of made-in-Vietnam medicines at provincial-level hospitals has risen to
35.4 percent since the Ministry of Health initiated an ongoing project named
“Vietnamese people give priority to using made-in-Vietnam medicines” in 2012.

The ratio was over 33 percent
before the project began.

Deputy Minister of Health Truong
Quoc Cuong said the project was designed to help national medicine develop
sustainably in the near future.

A report from the ministry
said the amount of people using made-in-Vietnam medicines at district-level
hospitals was up from 61.5 percent to 69.4 percent. The percentage in some
provinces reached over 80 percent, including Ninh Thuan, Phu Yen, Lai Chau, Lam
Dong and Long An.

The report also pointed out
that 10 out of 12 vaccines supplied under the National Expanded Programme on
Immunisation for Children are made in Vietnam.

Vietnam now has 163
factories manufacturing medicines that meet Good Manufacturing Practices of the
World Health Organisation, the report said.

Tran Viet Tiep, a doctor
from the Vietnam – Switzerland Hospital in the northeastern province of Quang
Ninh, said the factories had initially established a network of distribution of
their medicines in every province and city throughout the country.

The price of made-in-Vietnam
medicines was at least 30 percent lower compared to imported medicines,
providing a competitive advantage over imported ones, he said.

A representative of a major
domestic drug firm said his company always prioritised selecting qualified
domestic materials for manufacture. The major materials include Polyscias
fruticosa, Cynara scolymus, Glinus oppositifolius and Ipomoea cairica.

The ongoing project targets
the number of people using made-in-Vietnam medicines at provincial-level
hospitals reaching 50 percent, and district-level reaching 75 percent, by 2020.

To do that, some current
shortcomings have to be overcome, said Nguyen Tat Dat, deputy head of the
ministry’s Drug Administration of Vietnam.

The shortcomings include a
lack of specialty drugs and suitable marketing campaigns to introduce domestic
medicines to users.

Therefore, the ministry was
encouraging domestic drug firms to boost co-operation as well as conduct
in-depth research so that they could manufacture more specialty drugs to serve
demand of patients in the future, he said.

Currently, the specialty
drugs we use were mainly imported, he said.

The ministry had also
launched a range of programmes to raise public awareness of made-in-Vietnam
medicines. For example, a programme named “The way for made-in-Vietnam
medicines” introduced domestic medicines via television, radio, newspaper and
internet campaigns.

Additionally, Deputy
Minister Cuong said all hospitals were asked to encourage their doctors to
prioritise made-in-Vietnam medicines instead of imported medicines when
providing prescriptions.

Domestic medicine producers
should constantly improve the quality of their products to win the loyalty of
customers, he said.-VNA